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Palm Announces Separated Software Operations
Eharley writes: "'Palm on Monday announced it has completed the split of its operating system division from the rest of the company. The software unit will now report separately on the financial performance of its licensing business, and could eventually be spun off or sold by Palm.'
Yahoo is carrying the story here. Considering that their market share in PDA devices has been slipping, is this a move that will signal the end of the Palm hardware line or organizers?"
Hopefully, this situation will change in the next couple of months. Palm would be foolish to let the BeOS developer base erode further given the fact that they could incorporate future apps into the Palm line.
However, given their previous screw-ups, who knows. Maybe Apple should revive the Newton....
Obviously someone learned from Apple's mistakes. Palm is the superior platform (compare a high-end Clie to an iPaq and try telling me otherwise). WinCE is a bloated, silly way of navigating a palmtop machine. I, personally, don't want to bring my MP3 player to meetings nor do I want to bring my organizer when I go for a walk. What MS and the PocketPC manufacturers haven't learned is that people might like to have add-on capabiliity (add a modem or a GPS to your Palm), but they like the ability to travel lightly. A palmtop that requires 32MB of RAM just for the operating system is nottravelling lightly.
While they refuse to license BeOS, this could potentially change things in that respect...hopefully they'll either license it out, or...even better...continue development on it. It would definitely be a shame to see Be development stopped or limited to Palm's narrow goals.
That would be a great twist, especially if JLG came back as CEO. :)
... is that they made their PDAs work *too* well. Think of it this way: everyone who wants a Palm Pilot has one by now and, if they're anything like any of my friends, they're in no hurry to "upgrade", even to a color screen. Palm's gear is great for the tasks it's designed to perform, and, unfortunately for Palm, there's really no constant need to upgrade like there is for a PC. People who bought Palm Pilots 2 years ago are still in no hurry to replace them, unless they've got a bit of disposable cash laying around (and who does, these days?)
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Well, when I go to the store for "Kleenex" and "Ketchup", I come home with the generic store brand stuff.
"Palm" is a good name, but I can see where it could come to refer to any little handheld computing device ...
PalmOS has a much more mature commercial and GCC development suit and numerous language choices. The POSE (Palm OS Emulator) is far superior to the Windows CE equivalents and hardware debugging is better supported.
As a PalmOS and WindowsCE developer I am constantly tortured by the incredibly sluggish hardware level debugging with WinCE devices.
Additionally during development many WinCE applications will run perfectly well in emulation only to fail on an actual device (and hence requiring more hardware debugging). To be true this is always going to be a problem (the softare emulation/hardware differences) and it does effect PalmOS as well but to a much smaller degree (due to their excellent emulator).
I guess my point is WinCE development is so severly hampered by the Microsoft supplied development environment that I'm not surprised there is considerably less software available for WinCE.
I can see some advantages to WinCE having the 'standard' Win32 interface (assuming you already know how to development in Win32 land) but often I find most functionality is 'stubbed out' and it's a constant question of carefully reading the caveats in the documentation regarding what Win32 features WinCE actually does support...
I'd much rather develop under PalmOS anyday.
Anyway, just my 2 cents.
"At the end of the day, more than 80% of handhelds sold run Palm OS"
This is no longer mid 2000. At the start of 2001 WinCE had quickly grown from 7% to 10% marketshare. Currently PalmOS devices account for around 70% market share. You can verify this by checking the PDFs of companies that recommend buying options on PDA stocks. WinCE devices are around 26% with the rest taken up by the extremely small players.
7% December/00 to 26% January/02. That is quite a shift isn't it?
--- I do not moderate.
7% December/00 to 26% January/02. That is quite a shift isn't it?
:-)
Are you counting dollars spent or units sold? The typical Wince box costs *bunches* more. And what matters to a developer is the size of the existing user base. Considering what a 900-lb marketing gorilla MS is, I think hanging on to market share the way PalmOS has is a remarkable success.
And I think PalmOS is going to be very happy running in future cellphones. I don't think we're gonna see Wince running on Palm iron anytime soon.
-=Maggie Leber=-
A few things...
First of all, PocketPCs aren't useful for any of the features you mentioned. Do you really want to type out a full word doc on a PocketPC? And if not, then why can't you use the memopad on a Palmpilot? Same goes for Excel. Another thing.. Palmpilot's can integrate seamlessly with outlook in the same way PocketPC's can (yes, right out of the box). The PalmOS also has a larger base of software and while the processor speed may seem slow it's blazingly fast for almost every application available for it.
Yes, even games on the PalmOS are significantly more advanced than on the PocketPC. And mp3 playback? Puh-lease. I'm really not that interested in storing two mp3s on my PocketPC and then being completely unable to put any programs on it.
So am I saying Palm is better than WinCE? No, not really. I have devices running both operating systems, but there are a lot of things about PocketPCs that bother me. The amount of programs available is small and generally limited to commercial apps. Most of those are pretty task-specific and will only be of use to certain people. The rest are very general purpose and are available for any platform on Earth (PDA or otherwise).
On the other hand, the WinCE interface is "prettier" and more "familiar". It's easy to understand how to use one for basic functions if you know how to use windows. What's that mean? Well, it means that the learning curve is about five minutes shorter than on a PalmOS based device. More advanced functions, like file management, still require learning, reading, and frustration.
As flame-like as this might seem... it's just my opinion. Handhelds running Linux are geeky and fun (argh! damn it all! I want one that I can install Linux on!), handhelds running PalmOS are practical and fun (like I said - mucho games, many good), and handhelds running WinCE are pretty. Organizational tasks are possible on any of them, but in the end I still think the PalmOS has 'em all beat for its practicality and usability.
If you need to interpret my post, then you don't get it.
"Our strategy is, if the environment is a Microsoft environment, we are going to work with Microsoft hardware and Microsoft documents better than Microsoft does,"
This statement is just wrong in so many ways.
First, they will have the problem that Linux users have with MS Word documents. Microsoft can change the format whenever they want.
Second, most Microsoft documents are meant to be edited from a Windows box, especially when you take into account embedded images, and other crap that bloats a word document. Those dont work so well on a platform with very real and pretty much fixed hardware specs.
The only way that Palm can deal with Microsoft documents better then Microsoft is if Microsoft ports up to date versions of its products to Palm's OS. Given the choice between supporting a competitor or supporting themselves, Microsoft will support its self.
I think they need a better plan. One that involves delivering features specifically targeted to their platform rather then emulating a different platforms capabilities.
END COMMUNICATION
Palm has succeeded in the market [~20m is pretty impressive] because they know precisely what they're about. Many people have tried to make PDA-like devices, but failed because they either tried to exceed hardware limitations or tried to make their OS/Apps do too much, ignoring the actual useful applications that people would use them for.
... Where's a real application that people will actually buy?
... from what I can tell, when the time is right. What opportunity have they missed out on exactly? The opportunity to sell to some bleeding edge techies for some short lived time while the next latest and greatest device comes along? That's not how you run a profitable business.
The modern PocketPC may be quite a bit further along, but it's really not there yet. It offers few worthwhile reasons to switch and many drawbacks. I mean, for the extra 100-300 dollars, what do you get precisely? You certainly get far inferior battery life [especially if you try to use the handheld as the computer it is marketed to be, not as a PDA]. You get an interface that is not nearly as well designed for actual PDA usage. Palm's UI, while it may not be very pretty by todays standards, is fast and is easy to operate proficiently on the go. In short, while PocketPC may _technically_ be able to run all the PDA applications, it does a significantly inferior job of it on the aggregate.
In it's place....we get what? Word and Excel are only be a frustration for the average person to operate. Even for advanced users, it's pretty frustrating. Mp3s? The storage capacity is not nearly there for me at least and the sound quality is pretty flat.
It's not as if you can say that Palm has been or is a failure. They've got the vast majority of the PDA marketshare and they're still controlling roughly 80% of NEW PDA sales DESPITE the presence of these nifty PocketPC gadgets [not to mention the muscle of one very large company].
You may be correct that it is an evolving market. However, many signs show that Palm is adapting appropriately. They're clearly positioning for a radical change (e.g., StrongARM, Be, etc.)
They can test and develop software and hardware quite well without having to spend millions on marketing devices to consumers before they're appropriate. You assert that PocketPC is a success, but has anyone really made any money on it yet when all is considered? I don't think so.
I think what this really means is that we may be within two years see PDA's running the Palm OS from more than just Palm, Handspring and Sony. Imagine a company like Samsung and LG Electronics getting into PDA's big time running Palm OS; I believe Samsung has in a way dabbled with Palm OS with their new cellphone that has the Palm OS built in.
Or imagine NTT DoCoMo i-Mode cellphones with the Palm OS interface; in short, this could lead to widespread acceptance of the Palm OS on cellphones worldwide.
What do you think the chances are that Palm decided to spin off the PalmOS division to make room for the new BeOS engineering team?
Nah, they're just spinning off the software division before the Xerox lawsuit reduces them to rubble.
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